Although Par­adise Earth: Day Zero begins with the trek of a Jehovah’s Wit­ness imme­di­ate­ly after a dis­as­ter that he believes is God’s war of Armaged­don, read­ers will be aston­ished at what hap­pens to this Wit­ness and six­ty-nine oth­er indi­vid­u­als inside the Black Island King­dom Hall of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es through­out the con­fla­gra­tion.

After a week­ly con­gre­ga­tion­al meet­ing, instead of depart­ing for home, the Wit­ness­es end up trapped for weeks dur­ing what seems to be the “apoc­a­lypse” which all of them earnest­ly wel­comed.

Out­side the build­ing, a rare thun­der snow­storm show­ers down snow, chunks of ice and mar­ble-sized hail dur­ing sun­less days and moon­less nights, fol­lowed by mis­sile-like balls of fire shot from the sky onto the frozen earth. Inside the build­ing, the King­dom Hall becomes a frozen tomb for many.

Author,Anthony Math­e­nia, mas­ter­ful­ly takes us along on a riv­et­ing sub­sur­face explo­ration of the religion’s the­o­log­i­cal intri­ca­cy and aston­ish­ing mind­set that caus­es unex­pect­ed results in Wit­ness behav­ior as severe per­son­al tribu­la­tion takes place for each of them show­ing us that they are not what they seem to be. As secrets are revealed, we see how con­flict­ed the world of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es is and we can’t help but come to some grim con­clu­sions about those who jump on the end-of-the-world band­wag­on.

At the cliffhang­er con­clu­sion of this, the first part of a three-part series, we are left anx­ious and ready to read the next install­ment, Week One.

This unusu­al thought-pro­vok­ing nov­el stands alone because few peo­ple can offer insight into the world of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es as Math­e­nia can even though using an imag­i­nary sce­nario. Writ­ers are told to write about what they know best, and Math­e­nia knows all about Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es in that he was raised in the reli­gion that he took very seri­ous­ly as he climbed the theo­crat­ic lad­der laid out for ambi­tious young men by Wit­ness lead­er­ship.

–

Bar­bara Ander­son was a mem­ber of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es from 1954 to 1997. She worked at Watchtower’s head­quar­ters in Brook­lyn, NY, from 1982 to 1992 where dur­ing her last three years there, she researched the movement’s offi­cial his­to­ry (pub­lished in 1993) and did research as well as wrote a num­ber of arti­cles for their Awake! mag­a­zine. She has done exten­sive research on issues relat­ed to child sex­u­al abuse in the reli­gion lead­ing to inter­views on major TV and radio pro­grams as an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es sex­u­al abuse poli­cies. She main­tains the web­site watchtowerdocuments.com

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Featured Books

When the ground quakes and blazing balls of fire fall from the sky, a religious sect interprets it as the fulfillment of long-held prophecies foretelling the end of the world. The members flee to their religious sanctuary, believing that this global cataclysm is the portent of a new paradise of eternal happiness.
Inside, one cold and starving man struggles to hold onto his hope for the future. He's sacrificed everything for his faith in the prophecy, including his family. As the tortuous night drags on he grapples with a lifetime of beliefs and expectations.
If he survives to see the paradise earth, will it be worth it?
Paradise Earth is a deconstruction of faith at the end of the world and beyond. More info →